


And Thus We Meet Again

by centuries



Category: Jessica Darling Series - Megan McCafferty
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centuries/pseuds/centuries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica and Marcus meet again, after several years, and with nothing really much to say. Or do they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Thus We Meet Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fromiftowhen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fromiftowhen/gifts).



> For some reason I found airports inescapable, my apologies! Treat!

She fumbles for her passport to make sure she hasn’t lost it at the domestic terminal of SFO, terminal 3, to be precise, which she had to be 30 minutes earlier when she was scrambling off BART in search of her flight's point of embarkation. Security was horrendous and she had to weave through half of the ticket counters. To find an overbooked flight with the promised reward of $200 and a free flight. Which she could do with, now she was traveling for business and pleasure, like a real person.

She first notices him outside of Peet's, hammering away on a laptop computer, deep in concentration, as she wanders through the airport, watching, waiting, maybe enticing a spark of productivity or happiness. Or to at least watch countless hipster young men pass and dawdle in thoughts of sexual intrigue or if she was too old to really find their ambiguity and their listlessness so damn attractive.

It is him, she is sure, by her third pass. Though, it seems naturally they'd meet here, drawn by the magnetism of the city, by what it could mean to her or him. He must be leaving, though so was she. Perhaps to come back, to an apartment off of Mission or SOMA, if she could ever afford it, stints volunteering at 826 Valencia though she was still not sure if she found Dave Eggers emotionally buoyant or trite and overwrought.

He notices her on the fourth, as by this time she has found herself awkwardly checking her iPhone and realizing this entire business is much too insidery and self-referential. He probably can't be sure it is her either. She is not sure what to do. She does want coffee though, so she allows herself to move closer to him, to stand in line, to wait to decide if she wants to say anything.

"Jessica, whatever are you doing here?"

"I might live here," she decides to reply back, ambiguous but pointed. He knows nothing about her, abstaining from Facebook and all related media, but he probably has a source, or something, if he is even like that, if he even really remembers her.

“Oh, really?”

“No, face value. I might live here, I’m thinking about moving.”

“Well, what whatever do you like about here?”

“I think you mean, what do I like most.”

“I’d love to have you show me.”

She looks at him vacantly, processing the request. She now has five hours to burn, but only really three of those could be useful, not counting transit, security, the works. She is tempted. She wants to talk to him, but more so, she wants to delay leaving.

“I like the museums. They are bold and infectious without being as large and insurmountable as major, beloved ones, you know?”

“I do believe I do. SFMOMA or the De Young?”

“We don’t have time to get to the De Young,” she starts, realizing what she is in for, realizing she wants to plan to be back at the airport with a time cushion, but that she is planning for four hours, at the least, with Marcus Flipping Flutie. “But where do you have to be?”

“Tickets are refundable on Southwest as long as you don’t get on board,” he tells her, implying even more, suggestive, amusing, perhaps even the De Young is an option. Or the Palace of Fine arts and looking out across to the actual Pacific, not the silt-ladden bay.

“Shall you lead the way?” she asks, wishing she had fewer carryons. But it was manageable and she could stow them at coat check.

It took them nearly 45 minutes to Montgomery station an additional ten to be inside at the retrospective, flashes of paintings she had seen before in books, a Matisse, a Rivera, a Kahlo. He leads her through the galleries at a brisk pace, not enough to really talk about anything and with enough space between them but they stop in the very contemporary section, lingering before a roll of a drawing, just really a drawing.

“These are a pain to a conserve and I’m not entirely sure they are devoted to conserving them,” Marcus begins, pulling from some internal tether of art and historicism and potentially even museum studies. She is acutely aware of how little she knows about the him and now, but she senses he’s trying to challenge her, provoke an accurate response, see who Jessica is and what she thinks about art.

“Hmm,” is all she gives him. But she starts ahead of him to the second floor, stealing a time check from her iphone and trying to shake off some of the awkwardness between them, cut the fear and stale regrets. If his are regrets.

On the second floor is a strange installation about surveillance with spotlights as target practice and they become enraptured with the idea, picking children and adults and watching their response to being watched. It is much too entertaining, a simple, small moment without a past and preconceptions.

By the third floor, he is standing closer to her, watching an emotionally provocative piece that seems to foreshadow loss and when they exit the montage, he is silent and pensive. She watches the snapshot of her old Marcus nearly supersede whatever mental facade she has built over the last few years of feelings and rough, hard, emotions.

By the fourth floor, she grabs his hand and squeezes it, to pick him up as he sullenly watches an installation about wine. He looks at her, closely, like he is seeing her again for the first time, now that she has gone out of the way to touch him.

With the moments ticking by, they exit and take a detour into an alleyway by a far too expensive hotel and he presses her against the wall and all she notices is Marcus and the flashing lights of expired parking meters. Even the alley is far too public for what she feels for him. In a new place, in a place not yet her own.

“Where are you going?” she asks him, with her hand finding a comfortable place bellow his ass, keeping ahold of his leg.

“Where do you want to?” he asks in reply. It is foggy and grey but he stands out from the background in a deep maroon tshirt and jeans and she would like to find out what he now looks like without.


End file.
